Sea-fishing
areas of west Africa have fallen prey to the world's
largest and most modern
fishing fleets. Link to this video
More on this story:
- Seven steps to prevent the collapse of west Africa's fishing grounds
- Senegal's fishing community will act on foreign fleets if government doesn't
- The true cost of industrial fishing in west Africa – video
Mauritania's
waters are crowded. Twenty-five miles out to sea and in great danger from
turbulent seas are small, open pirogues crewed by handfuls of local fishermen,
taking pitifully few fish. Also here within 50 miles of us are at least 20 of
the biggest EU fishing vessels, along with Chinese, Russian and Icelandic
trawlers and unidentifiable pirate ships.
We are
closest to the Margaris, a giant 9,499-tonne Lithuanian factory trawler able to
catch, process and freeze 250 tonnes of fish a day, and a small Mauritanian
vessel, the Bab El Ishajr 3. Here too, in the early mists, its radio
identification signal switched off, is Spanish beam trawler the Rojamar. The
Arctic Sunrise, Greenpeace's 40-year-old former ice-breaker, is shadowing one
of Britain's biggest factory trawlers – the 4,957-tonne Cornelis Vrolijk.
Operated by the North Atlantic Fishing Company (NAFC), based in Caterham,
Surrey, it is one of 34 giant freezer vessels that regularly work the west
African coast as part of the Pelagic Freezer Association (PFA), which
represents nine European trawler owners.
The ship,
which employs Mauritanian fish processing workers aboard, is five miles away,
heading due south at 13 knots out of dirty weather around Cape Blanc on the
western Saharan border. By following the continental ledge in search of
sardines, sardinella, and mackerel, it hopes to catch 3,000 tonnes of fish in a
four- to six-week voyage before it offloads them, possibly in Las Palmas in the
Canary Islands.
But, says
NAFC managing director Stewart Harper, while most of its fish will end up in
Africa, none will go to Mauritania, despite the country facing a famine in
parts. "Unfortunately Mauritania does not yet have the infrastructure to
handle cargoes of frozen fish or vessels of our size," he says.
The west
African coast has some of the world's most abundant fishing grounds, but they
are barely monitored or policed, and wide open to legal and illegal plunder.
According to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, all west African
fishing grounds are fully or over-exploited to the detriment of over 1.5
million local fishermen who cannot compete with them or feed their growing
populations.
Heavily
subsidised EU-registered fleets catch 235,000 tonnes of small pelagic species
from Mauritania and Moroccan waters alone a year, and tens of thousands of
tonnes of other species in waters off Sierra Leone, Ghana, Guinea Bissau and
elsewhere.
A further
unknown amount is caught by other countries' vessels, but the individual
agreements made between west African countries and foreign companies are mostly
secret.
Despite
possible ecological collapse, and growing evidence of declining catches in
coastal waters, west African countries are now some of the EU's most-targeted
fishing grounds, with 25% of all fish caught by its fleets coming from the
waters of developing countries.
Willie
MacKenzie, a Greenpeace ocean campaigner, said: "Europe has over-exploited
its own waters, and now is exporting the problem to Africa. It is using EU
taxpayers' money to subsidise powerful vessels to expand into the fishing
grounds of some of the world's poorest countries and undermine the communities
who rely on them for work and food. The EU has committed some €477m for
agreements with Mauritania over the past 10 years, essentially paying for
vessels like the Cornelis Vrolijk to be able to access these waters," he
adds.
According to
the PFA, about 50 international freezer-trawlers are active in Mauritanian
waters at any one time, of which 30 originate from countries such as Russia,
China, Korea or Belize. "By targeting fish species that cannot be fished
by local fishermen, we avoid disrupting local competition and growth and always
fish outside the 12-13 mile fishing limit for our type of vessel," says a
spokesman.
"Not
all international operators active in Mauritanian waters meet the EU's safety
and environmental standards. This threatens our efforts to foster sustainable
practices in the region."
Greenpeace
says the over-exploitation of African fisheries by rich countries is
ecologically unsustainable and also prevents Africans from developing their own
fisheries. It takes 56 traditional Mauritanian boats one year to catch the
volume of fish that a PFA vessel can capture and process in a single day. Since
the 1990s, the once-abundant west African waters have seen a rapid decline of
fish stocks. Local fishermen say their catches are shrinking and they are
forced to travel further and compete with the industrial trawlers in dangerous
waters unsuitable for their boats.
"Our
catch is down 75% on 10 years ago. When the foreign boats first arrived there
was less competition for resources with local fishermen and fewer people relied
on fishing for food and income. Governments have become dependent on the income
received by selling fishing rights to foreign corporations and countries,"
says Samb Ibrahim, manager of Senegal's largest fishing port, Joal.
"Senegal's
only resource is the sea. One in five people work in the industry but if you
put those people out of work then you can imagine what will happen. Europe is
not far away and Senegal could become like Somalia," said Abdou Karim
Sall, president of the Fishermen's Association of Joal and the Committee of
Marine Reserves in West Africa.
"People
are getting desperate. For sure, in 10 years' time, we will carry guns. The
society here destabilises as the fishing resource is over-exploited. As the
situation become more difficult, so it will become more and more like
Somalia," he said.
There is
now growing concern that illegal or "pirate" fishing is out of
control in some waters. According to the UN, across the whole of sub-Saharan
Africa, losses to illegal fishing amount to about $1bn a year – 25% of Africa's
total annual fisheries exports.
Guinea is
thought to lose $105m of fish to pirate fishing a year, Sierra Leone $29m, and
Liberia $12m. An investigation by Greenpeace and the Environmental Justice
Foundation in 2006 found that over half of the 104 vessels observed off the
coast of Guinea were either engaging in or linked to illegal fishing
activities.
Surveillance
and monitoring of overfishing is now urgently needed or fish stocks will
collapse, leading to humanitarian disasters in many countries, says the UN.
Increasingly, ships are transferring their catches to other vessels while at
sea, rather than directly off-loading in ports. This conceals any connection
between the fish and the vessel by the time the fish arrives on the market,
meaning the true origin of the catch is unknown.
However,
the PFA says banning EU vessels from African waters would not be sensible.
In a
statement it said: "Less regulated, less transparent and less sustainable
fishing operators would replace the European vessels. This would be a bad deal
for Europe and the African countries we partner with.
"They
would see less strategic infrastructure investment, reduced transfer of skills
and knowhow, as well as scientific research and more depleted fish stocks. And
in Europe we would damage a viable part of EU's fishing economy to the benefit
of countries such as China.
"All
of the fish caught by the PFA is destined for west-central African communities
rather than consumers in developed countries. In fact, the fish caught and
distributed by the PFA is often the only source of essential protein for the
people in countries such as Nigeria."
• John
Vidal's travel costs to Senegal were paid by Greenpeace. The NGO had no say
over editorial content.
Related Article:
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Fishermen
return from their night's labours. About 1 million
people in Senegal depend on
the industry for food.
Photograph: Randy Olson/National Geographic/Getty
Images
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